Art Center DOT Launch Branding Program

Art Center College of Design is known for its orange dot logo. DOT Launch is the school's new entrepreneurial initiative providing enterprising Art Center designers with the knowledge, experience and resources to develop entrepreneurial ventures. Our solution uses the orange dot to connect the initiative to the school and a soaring rocket to represent the launch of new enterprises. The logo also creates a symbolic pencil point, as many innovative design ideas originate with a simple pencil sketch. The tagline "Empowering Design Entrepreneurs" clearly defines the initiative's focus, identifies its audience and references the launch theme. The logo can be used in a number of different signature configurations to meet a wide variety of space requirements, resulting in an extremely flexible branding system. The animated intro connects the rocket launch identity to a pencil point as the genesis for innovative design ideas, while transforming the orange dot into a visual representation of empowering design entrepreneurs. The secondary symbol system places Art Center's orange dot at center of each of the entrepreneurial initiative's core aspirations. The business card typography creates a rocket exhaust trail. The rocket tip points to the person's name and title on the orange back. The shirt uses a striking black background to introduce the logo and tagline on the front while displaying the logo on the back. The award recognizes the contributions of Partners, Mentors and Entrepreneurs, using the logo to create unique dimensional form. The email announces events, lectures and workshops, using color to define each area of content. The website introduces the rocket launch concept and serves as an all-encompassing resource for Art Center designers seeking to become successful design entrepreneurs.

Established in 1990, Gee + Chung Design is an award-winning multidisciplinary design firm creating successful identity and branding programs, marketing and sales collateral, annual reports, books, product packaging, environmental design and websites for clients including Apple, Adobe Systems, Chronicle Books, the Federal Reserve Bank, IBM, Lucasfilm, Oracle, Sony Electronics and Stanford University. Gee + Chung Design has been profiled on the Adobe Systems website, Rockport Publishers? Graphic Design: America 2 featuring the work of 35 of the leading graphic design firms in the U.S., Graphis BrandingUSA 1 and 2 and Designer?s Workshop (Japan). The firm has recently been selected by the U.S. Department of Commerce to lead a program to promote international business development.

Earl was formerly a designer at Landor Associates, San Francisco and senior designer at Mark Anderson Design in Palo Alto. As one of 50 U.S. graphic designers named to the international edition of Who?s Who in Graphic Design, he has served on a United Nations-sponsored Delegation on Package Design touring the People?s Republic of China and has lectured at leading universities and design organizations across the country. He is a frequent juror for major design competitions, including Critique, Step-By-Step Graphics, Publish, Exhibitor and Sappi Paper. He received his BFA in Graphic Design with Distinction from Art Center College of Design.

His partner, Fani Chung, has held design positions at Landor Associates, San Francisco; Lawrence Bender & Associates, Palo Alto and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and taught graphic design in the United States and Hong Kong. She received her BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Washington and received her MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University, where she studied with Paul Rand, Bradbury Thompson, Armin Hoffman, Herbert Matter and Shigeo Fukuda.

Gee + Chung Design has won multiple gold and silver awards from virtually every major design competition, organization and publication including Communication Arts, Graphis, Print, Critique, I.D., American Institute
of Graphic Arts, New York Art Directors Club, Type Directors Club, Society of Publication Designers and
Society for Environmental Graphic Design. The firm?s work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the permanent collections of the U.S. Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, AIGA Archives, Art Center College of Design Archives and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.